Spring Break (February/March 1993 | Volume: 44, Issue: 1)

Spring Break

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Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

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February/March 1993 | Volume 44, Issue 1

From early times, the Bahamas have enjoyed the notion of themselves as the “Isles of Perpetual June,” and more than one piece of tourist literature has assigned that sentiment to George Washington, who supposedly visited as a young man. In fact, there is no proof that Washington spoke well of the Bahama Islands, or that he slept here. But his countrymen certainly have—by the millions. Some came as refugees, some as tourists, some to pursue the cause of war, and some to drink elixirs forbidden to them back home by the Volstead Act.

In 1923, an Englishman on holiday observed: “The Bahamas are so much nearer to the United States than to England that, if you take an American off his guard, you will find him speaking of them as if they were an additional state, or at least a territory.”

Last March, when winter still blew chill in New York, I caught a wave into Nassau, a vast American wave called Spring Break. College kids by the exuberant hundreds poured into the oncestately British Colonial hotel just as I arrived; on the receding wave an equivalent number were checking out. Spring Break lasts a good, long month in Nassau, an intelligence some of us over the age of thirty discovered and quickly shared, feeling slightly sheepish about our elder-statesman status. And a little cranky. Even after a relatively short flight, the last thing a traveler needs to hear is “Your room won’t be ready for three hours; why don’t you go out and get familiar with the town?” Remembering to slip a broad-brimmed hat from my bag, set amidst luggage that grew like a Lego set around the front desk, that’s what I obediently did.

Only to discover that the fleet, in a sense, was in town too. At the docks that edge Bay Street rose decks and stacks of huge cruise ships. Their passengers thronged Bay Street, buying from its fast-food emporiums, its Cartier boutique, and its straw market. Bay Street was a jumble and a jostle; it was noisy with traffic and the sun was searing, yet, after a minute or two, it seemed to spin back to the color and life of another time.

 

Later, I read in a 1934 guidebook, “Here modernity is merely a cloak worn over an interesting old body whose pulse still beats to the tempo of the more leisurely ages.” Nearly sixty years after that observation, even as “modernity” has multiplied a thousandfold, the older Nassau still speaks.

Seven hundred islands and close to 2500 islets make up the Bahamas, with Bimini the nearest to North America. Although many places are claimed for Columbus’s first landing, the Bahamian island of San Salvador still is considered a prime candidate. In 1992, various commemorations were under way, as the argument raged over whether the New World had gained or lost the more by the incursions of the old. Exhibits and lectures throughout the islands mainly focused